'Tis the season for staph and streptococcus

Deck the shelves with antibiotics, tra la la la la la la la lah.
‘Tis the season for staph and streptococcus, tra la la la la la la la lah.

     An outbreak of festering skin sores on our feet and lower legs is sweeping through 10 Pearl Street.  It reminded me of a time 37 years ago in PNG where I am certain little has changed.

     Our family moved to Lae in PNG when I was eight.  For the first few weeks I was in a state of shock, the type of macabre shock that entrances a young child who has had a charmed and sheltered life.  It was shock that grew, much to my delight, as I encountered the extraordinary in the ordinary of life in a third world country. 

     Mothers pulling nits from their children’s hair and slipping the parasites between their lips. 

    The rich, acrid and often nauseating smells that overwhelmed me at the markets where my mother insisted I accompany her; smoke from two-toea stick tobacco, bitter coconut oil in the Nationals' afro hair, a pungent waft of fish laid out on banana leaves in the steamy, equatorial heat.  There were cus cus, small, native mammals with large, innocent eyes in home-made bamboo cages and pigs, both waiting for slaughter.  
The campfire smell of the billum, the traditional string bags the women sat around weaving after rolling the plant fibres (and sometimes cuscus) along their muscly legs to make twine. 

     People crippled or disfigured at birth, there being no health care system to treat such conditions; faces bulbous with cancers and deformities, people of all ages limping from polio, elephantiasis-like and other diseases rare in Australia, handless and feetless limbs, often wrapped in rags to cushion the stump, a mangled and permanently closed eye, the long, keloid scar suggesting a bush knife attack. 

     A man beating his wife by the roadside as she squatted and shielded the blows to her head.

     “Don’t look, Catherine,” said Dad.  Of course, I looked.  It’s just not right, I thought.    Someone should do something to help her.  Except the shiny bush knife on his belt, the one with the 50 centimetre blade was a good reason to turn a blind eye. 

     All this was happening in Australia's neighbouring country.  In fact, it was more like another planet.

     But what I found most fascinating in those early weeks were the tropical ulcers that erupted on my and my brothers’ feet.  We ditched our sandals and sandshoes upon arrival in our new country and embraced the laid-back lifestyle and freedom to roam. What started as small scratches from mosquitoes and thick foliage we explored, seemed to thrive in the hot, wet humidity and flower, literally bloom across and into our skin.  They were perfectly round, like deep ponds of shiny, pink water, always with a halo of red. And the flies loved them.

     Out came the gentian violet, bright purple liquid that stained the skin.  It was supposed to kill the bacteria that caused the ulcer.  We needed to keep the sores clean and dry which was a losing battle in the 99 percent humidity and given the desire we had to keep running around without shoes or long pants.  The aim was to prevent a scab from forming; that meant ‘big trouble.’  I also remember gallons of the golden yellow acriflavine liquid and the fire-engine red, mercurochrome, other topical treatments for tropical ulcers that were completely ineffective.   

     One of us must have developed the typical red line that tracks up the leg denoting serious infection or developed a terrible fever which also meant ‘big trouble’ for there were injections of something in a huge glass syringe with a terrifyingly large needle more appropriate for use on elephants.  The drug worked, the sores healed and we seemed to develop an immunity that, for the most part, kept the ulcers at bay.  We were reminded of our season of sores only by the deep, round scars decorating our lower limbs.

     However, 37 years later, I still bear the now-faint scar of my deepest, largest and most fabulous tropical ulcer.

     Fast forward to the present day on TI.  This naigai season, the doldrums before the wet season, has provided perfect conditions for skin sores;  still, hot, humid.  I don’t know enough about tropical skin infections, but we’ve all developed circular, seeping, red-ringed sores on our legs and feet.

     “Is this normal?” asked Nicola, as she performed the ritual treatment on her sons’ legs.

     “It happens when it’s hot and warm,” I said, ho-hum.  “You get used to it and it’ll pass when the rain comes.”  I told her about the outbreaks of APSGN, the strep skin-infections that can lead to kidney disease and have hit TI twice in the past four years. 

     Nicola was shaking her head. “I’ve never seen anything like these sores that just won’t heal.”

     Fortunately in the Torres Strait, we have only sores, sores that generally heal with topical antiseptic and good hygiene.  If they become infected we have access to free medical consultation and free antibiotics. 

     We don’t have mothers de-nitting their children’s hair in public and consuming the nits.  We don’t have native animals being sold for food in circumstances that would give the RSPCA and Australian government apoplexy.  We don’t have people suffering the pain and indignity of gross deformity or amputees using dirty cloths as prostheses.  And we don’t have men exercising their right to beat the crap out of their wives on the side of the road.  
     We are living in the luckiest part of PNG’s lucky neighbour, every reason to be jolly.